BAMcinématek presents Saharan Frequencies, a seven-film exploration of the sounds of North Africa on three consecutive Mondays, Mar 4, 11 & 18 In-person appearances by acclaimed ethnographer Robert Gardner, Sublime Frequencies co-founders Hisham Mayet and Olivia Wyatt, and music critic Byron Coley The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor of BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek. Brooklyn, NY/Feb 15, 2013—On Mondays from March 4 through March 18, BAMcinématek presents Saharan Frequencies, a seven-film series exploring the sounds of North Africa in conjunction with BAM’s Winter/Spring Season engagement Mic Check: Hip Hop from North Africa and the Middle East. Saharan Frequencies showcases the range and diversity of traditional and contemporary North African music cultures through film. Influenced by the aesthetic of the intrepid recordists at film and record label Sublime Frequencies—a collective dedicated to exposing obscure sights and sounds from traditional urban and rural frontiers—and its co-founders/filmmakers, Hisham Mayet and Olivia Wyatt, this program features ethnographic documentaries, travelogues, concert films, and experimental works. The series explores the disparate cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, where music has emerged as a torchbearer of the revolutionary movement’s progressive energy and restless defiant spirit. For Mic Check (Mar 9), BAM brings together a host of rappers and anthem writers alongside traditional musicians for an evening of contemporary music born of radical social and political change. Opening the film series on Monday, March 4, is Ahmed El Maanouni’s dynamic concert film Trances (1981), restored by the World Cinema Foundation (WCF), about Nass El Ghiwane, whom Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker called a “mighty Moroccan band” and WCF co-founder Martin Scorsese called “the Rolling Stones of Africa.” Trances examines a time when access to pop music was incredibly limited in northern Africa. Nass El Ghiwane introduced an unsuspecting Moroccan population to music that was informed by various types of regional music, incorporated Sufi chants, theater, and poetry, and was rife with politically loaded lyrics. Scorsese became so entranced by the film that he encouraged Peter Gabriel to take cues from the band in composing his score to The Last Temptation of Christ and inaugurated the World Cinema Foundation’s work some 26 years later with Trances. Music critic Byron Coley, Senior Writer for Arthur Magazine, will introduce the 9:30pm screening. Other highlights include Mayet’s Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway (2008—Mar 4), a “visually fascinating and sonically captivating” (AllMusic) snapshot of the nightly spectacle of street music in Marrakesh’s Jemaa el-Fnna square, where trade caravans converge on their journey across the desert. Also screening is Mayet’s Folk Music of the Sahara: Among the Tuareg of Libya (2004—Mar 18), which offers a rare look at the musical tradition of the Tuareg of North Africa and their influence on Western music. Both screenings will be followed by Q&As with Mayet; Byron Coley will moderate the March 4 screening. On Monday, March 11, pioneering ethnographer Robert Gardner appears for a Q&A to follow the screening of his film Deep Hearts (1981), an “exquisitely shot…shamelessly expressionistic documentary of the annual political convention-cum-beauty contest held by the Bororo herdsmen of the upper Niger” (J. Hoberman). Deep Hearts screens with Peter Kubelka’s experimental short Unsere Afrikareise (1966); the two were paired when the film had its original theatrical run. Also on March 11 is Olivia Wyatt’s Staring into the Sun, a documentation of her trip to Ethiopia for the Festival of 1000 Stars. When Wyatt learns that the music and dance celebration has been canceled by the government, she travels to the Omo Valley via bush taxi to observe the culture of the local tribes instead. “With visuals as hypnotic as the performances, she deftly illustrates how music seeps into many different parts of life” (Nick Neyland, Pitchfork). Closing Saharan Frequencies on Monday, March 18, is Nagy Shaker and Paolo Isaja’s experimental film Summer 70 (1971), an essential entry in the counterculture canon that brims with the youthful energy of the 1970s and features a score by Egyptian composer Jamil Suleiman. For press information, please contact Gabriele Caroti at 718.724.8024 / [email protected] Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected] Saharan Frequencies Schedule Mon, Mar 4 4:30, 9:30pm: Trances 7pm: Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway Mon, Mar 11 4:30, 9:15pm: Staring into the Sun 7pm: Deep Hearts + Unsere Afrikareise Mon, Mar 18 4:30, 9:15pm: Summer 70 7pm: Folk Music of the Sahara: Among the Tuareg of Libya Deep Hearts (1981) 58min Directed by Robert Gardner. A model for Sublime Frequencies’ filmmaking practice, pioneering ethnographer Robert Gardner follows the ecstatic male beauty contests of the Bororo people in the Sahel desert. Screens with Unsere Afrikareise (1966) Directed by Peter Kubelka. Originally paired with Deep Hearts during that film’s initial run in 1981. 16mm. Mon, Mar 11 at 7pm Q&A with Robert Gardner Folk Music of the Sahara: Among the Tuareg of Libya (2004) Directed by Hisham Mayet. A rare look at the music and dance of the matriarchal Tuareg of North Africa. “If you ever wondered where some of Western music’s more exotic ideas originated from (Sun Ra’s Arkestra, call-and-response choruses, trance drumming, and even some forms of modern hip-hop) this is a great place to start!” (Sublime Frequencies). Digital. Mon, Mar 18 at 7pm Q&A Musical Brotherhoods From the Trans-Saharan Highway (2008) 60min Directed by Hisham Mayet. “This is simply some of the hottest street music one is ever likely to experience” (Dusted). Musicians, fortune-tellers, snake charmers, dancing boys, medicine men, and magicians all converge at the nightly spectacle of Marrakesh’s Jemaa el-Fnna square, where the traditions of the Arab North and the Berber South meet. Digital. Mon, Mar 4 at 7pm Q&A with Hisham Mayet moderated by Byron Coley Staring Into the Sun (2011) 60min Directed by Olivia Wyatt. “Traveling from the northern highlands to the lower Omo Valley via bush taxi, Isuzu cargo truck, and any means possible, Wyatt brings together the worlds of Zar spirit possession, Hamer tribal wedding ceremonies, Borena water well polyphonic singing, wild hyena feedings, and bizarre Ethiopian TV segments. An enchanting look at the otherworldly images, stark landscapes and captivating sounds of the horn of Africa” (Sublime Frequencies). Digital. Mon, Mar 11 at 4:30, 9:15pm Summer 70 (1971) 63min Directed by Nagy Shaker, Paolo Isaja. Full of the youthful energy of the 1970s, this experimental work is an essential entry in the counterculture canon and features a score by Egyptian composer Soliman Gamil. Digital. Mon, Mar 18 at 4:30, 9:15pm Trances (1981) 90min Directed by Ahmed El Maanouni. A concert film unlike any other, Trances presents extraordinary footage of the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane, known as the Rolling Stones of Africa, whose legendary performances combined music, poetry, and theater. “Nass El Ghiwane was singing their nation, their people—their beliefs, their sufferings, their prayers” (Martin Scorsese). In Arabic with English titles. 35mm. Mon, Mar 4 at 4:30, 9:30pm* *Intro by Byron Coley About BAMcinématek The four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences alternative and independent films that might not play in the borough otherwise, making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn’s only daily, year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents new and rarely seen contemporary films, classics, work by local artists, and festivals of films from around the world, often with special appearances by directors, actors, and other guests. BAMcinématek has not only presented major retrospectives by major filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Manoel de Oliveira, Shohei Imamura, Vincente Minnelli (winning a National Film Critics’ Circle Award prize for the retrospective), Kaneto Shindo, Luchino Visconti, , but it has also introduced New York audiences to contemporary artists such as Pedro Costa and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In addition, BAMcinématek programmed the first US retrospectives of directors Arnaud Desplechin, Nicolas Winding Refn, Hong Sang-soo, and, most recently, Andrzej Zulawski. From 2006 to 2008, BAMcinématek partnered with the Sundance Institute and in June 2009 launched BAMcinemaFest, a 16-day festival of new independent films and repertory favorites with 15 NY feature film premieres; the fifth annual BAMcinemaFest will run from June 19—30, 2013. Credits The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor of BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek. Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater is made possible by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust. Pepsi is the official beverage of BAM. Brooklyn Brewery is the preferred beer of BAMcinématek. BAM Rose Cinemas are named in recognition of a major gift in honor of Jonathan F.P. and Diana Calthorpe Rose. BAM Rose Cinemas would also like to acknowledge the generous support of The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural